It feels like every week the Green Bay Packers awful defense is the big topic of discussion. It shouldn’t be. They have first-year starting quarterback Jordan Love playing at a high level, they have an impressive group of pass-catchers.
And Matt LaFleur is a great offensive mind. His ability to build an efficient offense in spite of the circumstances is beyond amazing. But at this point, he’s putting his own job at risk to protect defensive coordinator Joe Barry.
Everyone can see that the situation is completely unsustainable. The Carolina Panthers were averaging 14.7 points per game this season, and they scored 30 on the Packers. It was Bryce Young’s first 300-yard game and first 110.0 passer rating game in the NFL.
You won’t see a unit with more investment and talent around the league with a worse production than the Packers defense. Because of it, they can’t get a comfortable win against the worst team in football. How can they expect to be competitive in the playoffs?
Process over results
They won, and it can’t be undervalued in the NFL. But it’s a completely unsustainable way of playing.
And everyone can see it now. Packers fans, obviously, want change. But players are not stupid. They see how bad it’s been, and how it might affect their future — bad performances hinder their ability to go to the market and get big contracts. The front office gets exposed, because their draft picks and their free agency decisions look much worse than they really are.
Firing Joe Barry wouldn’t magically solve everything. The defense has a long way to go to recover from everything that has happened in Green Bay for over a decade.
But it’s the first step, and the only one the Packers can take right now. If LaFleur is not willing to do what, he’s putting his own job security at risk.
It’s clear that LaFleur made a mistake two years ago when he hired Barry. It’s not the ideal circumstances, but holding onto it just makes everything worse.
Maybe the Packers don’t have the perfect interim candidate to replace Barry for the final two games of the season, but how worse can it get? And at this point, things are so bad that the change for the sake of the change might work to a certain degree — look at how the Los Angeles Chargers defense looked better in their first game after getting rid of Brandon Staley.
The Packers can be better. They can do more with the talent they have. But the coaching staff is not built for that, and that’s exclusively on Matt LaFleur at this point.